Media Technologies: Mediated Families

This paper examines the impacts of consumption in Computer Mediated Environment (CME) on family structure. The ethnographic study uses observation and interactions with 20 families in Ireland to provide emic positions and meanings that are analysed to yield four themes; Empowerment – Disempowerment, Social Aggregation – Social Alienation, Immersion – Disengagement and Experimentation – Deviation. Taking the position that consumption in CME is more a solitary than shared activity, it argues that such individual consumption choices impact by altering the constitutive roles members are assigned or themselves assume in a family.